University of Groningen Hot stars in old stellar populations Trager, S. C.; Worthey, Guy; Faber, S. M.; Dressler, Alan Published in: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09288.x IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2005 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Trager, S. C., Worthey, G., Faber, S. M., & Dressler, A. (2005). Hot stars in old stellar populations: a continuing need for intermediate ages. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 362(1), 2-8. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09288.x Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 21-05-2019 Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 362, 2–8 (2005) doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2005.09288.x Hot stars in old stellar populations: a continuing need for intermediate ages S. C. Trager,1 Guy Worthey,2 S. M. Faber3 and Alan Dressler4 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/362/1/2/1340906 by University of Groningen user on 29 November 2018 1Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, Postbus 800, NL-9700 AV Groningen, the Netherlands 2Department of Physics and Astronomy, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164-2814, USA 3UCO/Lick Observatory and Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA 4The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 813 Santa Barbara Street, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA Accepted 2005 June 9. Received 2005 May 25; in original form 2005 March 14 ABSTRACT We investigate the effect of a low-level contamination of hot, old, metal-poor starlight on the inferred stellar populations of early-type galaxies in the core of the Coma Cluster. We find that the required correction to the Balmer and metal absorption-line strengths for old, metal- poor stars does not significantly affect the inferred age of the stellar population when the Hβ strength is large. Intermediate-aged populations are therefore still needed to explain enhanced Balmer-line strengths in early-type galaxies. This gives us increased confidence in our age estimates for these objects. For galaxies with weak Balmer-line strengths corresponding to very old populations (t > 10 Gyr), however, a correction for hot stars may indeed alter the inferred age, as previously suggested. Finally, the inferred metallicity [Z/H] will always be higher after any correction for old, metal-poor starlight than if it were not taken into account, but the enhancement ratios [E/Fe] will strengthen only slightly. Keywords: galaxies: clusters: individual: Coma – galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD – galaxies: stellar content. izontal branch stars) on the inferred stellar population ages and com- 1 INTRODUCTION positions of early-type galaxies in the Coma Cluster. These galaxies Stellar population analysis offers a powerful, if difficult to interpret, appear to have significant intermediate-aged populations due to their method of understanding the formation histories of nearby early- enhanced Balmer lines. We use blue indexes first described by Rose type galaxies (see Rose 1985; Gonz´alez 1993; Trager et al. 2000b; (1985, 1994) to determine the level of contamination of the galaxy Caldwell, Rose & Concannon 2003; Mehlert et al. 2003, for just a spectra by blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars. We then subtract few examples). This analysis relies primarily on the comparison of model spectra representing populations containing these stars from ahydrogen Balmer absorption-line strength to a metal absorption- the observed spectra and determine ages, metallicities, and enhance- line strength (or a combination of metal lines) to break the age– ment ratios from the residual spectra. Finally these stellar population metallicity degeneracy (Worthey 1994), as the Balmer lines are (non- parameters are compared with those determined from the observed linearly) sensitive to the temperature of the main-sequence turnoff spectra to quantify the effect of a contaminating population of old, and the metal lines are sensitive to the temperature of the red giant metal-poor stars on the spectra of early-type galaxies. branch. One can therefore determine accurate ages for the old stellar Throughout this paper, we refer to populations with metallicities populations found in early-type galaxies. However, other hot star [Z/H] −1.5 as ‘metal-poor’ (and thus possessing BHB stars) and populations such as blue horizontal branch stars or blue straggler populations with ages 1 t 10 Gyr as ‘intermediate aged’. stars can significantly increase the observed Balmer-line strengths of old stellar populations (see, e.g. Burstein et al. 1984; Rose 1985; Rose & Tripicco 1986; Rose 1994; de Freitas Pacheco & Barbuy 2DATA 1995; Maraston & Thomas 2000; Lee, Yoon & Lee 2000; Trager et al. 2000a). The line strengths discussed in this paper are derived from multi-slit In this paper we explore the effect of a specific kind of hot star spectra of twelve early-type galaxies in the Coma Cluster, centred on population (that is, old, metal-poor populations containing blue hor- the cD galaxy NGC 4874, taken with the Low-Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS: Oke et al. 1995) on the Keck II 10-m Tele- scope. Details relevant to the current study are summarized here; E-mail: [email protected] (SCT); [email protected] (GW); for a complete description of the acquisition, reduction and calibra- [email protected] (SMF); [email protected] (AD) tion of these spectra and the extraction of Lick/IDS absorption-line C 2005 RAS Hot stars in old galaxies 3 strengths we refer interested readers to Trager, Faber & Dressler (in Table 1. Observed line strengths of early-type galaxies in the Coma Cluster. preparation; hereafter TFD05). All indexes observed within an aperture of 2.7-arcsec diameter. Ca II Hn/Fe Hβ Mg b Fe5270 Fe5335 [O III] 2.1 Observations Name σσσσ σ σ σ Spectra were obtained in three consecutive 30-min exposures on D127 1.165 1.016 1.878 3.963 3.094 2.761 0.096 1997 April 7 UT with the red side of LRIS, with seeing full width at 0.014 0.005 0.067 0.072 0.085 0.088 0.048 half-maximum (FWHM) ≈ 0.8 arcsec, through clouds. A slit width D128 1.179 1.001 1.855 3.564 2.788 2.542 0.028 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/362/1/2/1340906 by University of Groningen user on 29 November 2018 of 1 arcsec was used in conjunction with the 600 line mm−1 grating 0.012 0.003 0.043 0.044 0.054 0.058 0.030 blazed at 5000 Å, giving a resolution of 4.4 Å FWHM (σ = 1.9 Å) D154 1.178 0.989 2.147 3.359 2.723 2.701 0.013 0.034 0.012 0.122 0.124 0.151 0.157 0.085 and a wavelength coverage of typically 3500–6000 Å, depending D157 1.173 1.012 1.817 3.940 2.839 2.670 0.054 on slit placement. Spectra of Lick/IDS standard G and K giant stars 0.009 0.007 0.052 0.052 0.063 0.065 0.036 and F9–G0 dwarfs (Worthey et al. 1994) were observed on the same D158 1.154 0.959 2.237 3.114 2.484 2.309 −0.007 and subsequent nights through the LRIS 1-arcsec long slit using the 0.021 0.009 0.088 0.089 0.107 0.115 0.061 same grating to be used for calibration to the Lick/IDS system (see GMP 3565 1.178 0.953 2.297 2.850 2.363 2.287 0.087 Section 2.3 below). 0.074 0.016 0.198 0.205 0.247 0.264 0.140 Individual two-dimensional spectra of each galaxy were extracted NGC 4864 1.197 1.028 1.738 4.716 2.907 2.889 0.074 from the multi-slit images after standard calibrations (overscan cor- 0.012 0.005 0.039 0.041 0.048 0.049 0.027 rection, bias removal, dark correction and flat field correction), NGC 4867 1.092 0.992 1.938 4.589 2.909 2.897 0.146 mapping of the geometric distortions, wavelength calibration and 0.017 0.006 0.031 0.032 0.038 0.039 0.022 NGC 4871 1.160 1.020 1.832 4.442 2.957 2.921 0.120 sky subtraction1 were performed following the methodology of 0.009 0.003 0.034 0.036 0.044 0.045 0.024 Kelson (2003). Both individual one-dimensional spectra and NGC 4872 1.165 1.023 1.781 4.598 2.923 2.836 0.104 variance-weighted combined spectra were then extracted from the 0.018 0.009 0.025 0.026 0.031 0.031 0.017 two-dimensional spectra.